The present subject matter relates to delivery vehicles. More particularly, the present subject matter relates to delivery vehicles having multiple tiers of storage which may be accessed for loading and delivery purposes through rear or side doors.
It is desirable to store and transport a wide variety of cargo in vehicles having multiple storage tiers so that an efficient use of the interior space in the vehicle may be made. In many distribution industries, single tier delivery vehicles suffer from several shortcomings which results in an inability to utilize the full capacity of the cargo area, results in possible injury to the driver, and results in an overall inefficiency in the loading and delivery process. For example, one such shortcoming is that stacking cargo or product to an excessive height introduces potential payload instability and/or damage to the respective cargo or product. The terms cargo, product, and case may be used interchangeably in this disclosure and such use should not limit the scope of the claims appended herewith. Another shortcoming is that excessive or inefficient stacking may result in a cumbersome access for manual unloading.
Thus, it is desirable to provide a system for raising and lowering cargo or product such that certain tiers may be loaded or unloaded from the lower level thereof. Multi-tier storage of cargo or product is known in the art. For example, it is known to provide upper and lower fixed storage platforms in a multi-tier cargo storage vehicle, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,139,109 to Murphy and U.S. Pat. No. 3,929,371 to Gibson. A variety of arrangements have been developed to overcome certain disadvantages of fixed tiers for multi-tier storage as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,779,487 to Harris, U.S. Pat. No. 2,832,636 to Black, U.S. Pat. No. 4,701,086 to Thorndyke, U.S. Pat. No. 5,931,262 to Greenlaw and U.S. Pat. No. 5,092,721 to Prince. These references, however, fail to address several inefficiencies present in the loading and delivery process described above and fail to address the injury issues with individuals who may be tasked to deliver and unload the product.
For example, a conventional delivery or direct-store-delivery (DSD) individual may generally be responsible for driving a pre-stocked route delivery vehicle from a warehouse to customers, unloading various product from the vehicle, delivering the product into customers' places of business, stocking shelves and displays within the customers' locations, and retrieving company merchandise including point-of-sale material, delivery containers, and damaged product. These individuals typically work eight to ten hours per day delivering to a variety of locations such as, but not limited to, grocery stores, convenience stores, hospitals, schools, and the like where, during a typical day, the individual may manually lift 200 to 600 cases of product, one at a time, and place the product onto a hand truck or other device. Upon transferring the hand truck into a customer's location, the individual may then manually unload the product therefrom onto shelves and/or into storage areas. This entire process provides a large number of inefficiencies into a distribution system.
Furthermore, conventional delivery vehicles are generally tall and contain deep and high cargo bays. These conventional bays are often seven feet high, forty inches wide and forty inches deep. Thus, the dimensions of the bay alone provide ergonomic issues such as removing product, opening/closing doors, and other ergonomic issues related to tall vehicles. Additional issues may also relate to performance, productivity, capacity and/or payload issues.
For example, with regard to the ergonomic issue of removing product, an individual must perform repeated, extended, and elevated reaches to access and lift product out of vehicular bays. With regard to the ergonomic issue of opening/closing doors, individuals must use repeated, extended and elevated reaches to open and close large, heavy bay doors. With regard to the ergonomic issue of tall vehicles, the vehicle employed for delivery may require an individual to reach up and pull beverages down, lift a load from high elevations to the ground, and may require an individual to lift empty containers up into the vehicle. Each of these movements places considerable stress on the individual's shoulders, elbows and lower back. This repetitive motion induces excess strain and sprain on the individual which is the principle condition of injury for 60% of reported injuries in the industry. Of these reported injuries, 50% are related to an individual's back and other portions of the trunk, 20% are related to lower extremities, and 20% are related to upper extremities. A recent case study was performed in which it was found that 61% of worker's compensation claims for an independent beer distributor were for these delivery individuals with twelve month worker's compensation claims totaling $478,000 equating to $0.048 per case delivered.
With regard to performance and productivity issues, it was determined that service areas in the industry are limited due to the time required at delivery stops. Independent time studies were performed defining the time required for various tasks associated with deliveries using a conventional delivery vehicle. Table 1 below provides one such exemplary time study.
TABLE 1TaskTimeMeasurePull Order off Truck0:05caseStock Backstock0:05unitRestock Displays0:05caseStock Cooler0:06unitOpen/Close Door0:07occurrencePaperwork0:07occurrenceBreak Down Empties0:30stopRoll product inside/stage0:34stackCollect Money1:10occurrenceCheck Order with Manager1:42occurrencePrint Invoice2:00occurrenceWalk3:34stopPrice Order4:37stop
With reference to Table 1 above, it was determined that decreasing the time per case for opening/closing doors and pulling cases off of a vehicle may decrease the overall time per stop thereby allowing a company to deliver product to more locations per truck.
With regard to capacity and payload issues, conventional delivery vehicle designs limit the number of cases that are placed onto the vehicle. In certain instances, a labor agreement may also limit the case payload to less than half of the vehicle capacity. Additionally, conventional delivery vehicle designs limit the number of different stock keeping units (SKU) that are placed onto a vehicle. As the number of SKUs being offered by many delivery and distribution companies have tripled in recent years, the conventional delivery vehicle design has remained unchanged thereby introducing a large inefficiency in the distribution system. Further, as case size proliferation is growing in many industries, an additional limitation is also introduced using conventional delivery vehicle capacities.
Considering the historical issues related to side-bay and rear delivery vehicle usage and the associated costs to companies, there have been many attempts to eliminate the aforementioned issues; however, these attempts have been limited to immaterial ergonomic changes for current delivery vehicle designs (e.g., changes in the driver's seat, liners for the bay, etc.), transition from a build-by-bay to a build-by-stop delivery process, and transition of customer deliveries to a rear delivery using alternative delivery methods. With regard to the transition to a build-by-stop process, historically, companies aggregate volume for a single package and place 100% of the volume into a single bay thereby resulting in a “shopping” of the truck by the driver to pull the appropriate volume for each individual stop. By transitioning to a build-by-stop process, each bay was utilized for a single customer stop thereby reducing the number of door opening/closing events. The build-by-stop process, however, fails to address other ergonomic issues and also reduces the capacity of delivery vehicles. With regard to a transition to rear-end deliveries, different delivery technologies have been introduced for use in conjunction with rear load deliveries such as external elevators, different carts, hand trucks, etc. While these technologies may reduce many of the ergonomic issues associated with certain delivery vehicles, this transition to a rear delivery introduces additional limitations in that not all customer locales accept rear-end load vehicles, any creation of customer specific orders may add significant cost to the warehouse operation, the additional cost to purchase, store, and maintain the new delivery equipment, and the current trend towards smaller order quantities is generally making these technologies obsolete.
Clearly, there is a need in the art to overcome the inefficiencies and problems in the art. Thus, there is a need in the art to provide a material change to the mechanical design of conventional delivery vehicles. There is also a need in the art to address the ergonomic, performance, productivity, capacity and payload issues and problems present in the industry.
Accordingly, one embodiment of the present subject matter provides a delivery vehicle comprising a bay having two parallel rectangular frames, each frame having two horizontal members and two vertical members and each of the frames opposing and facing the other, wherein at least two of the vertical members include a linear gear affixed to a portion of the length of the respective vertical member. The bay further includes a holding structure engaged by both of the rectangular frames. The holding structure may include a first horizontal frame adjacent each of the vertical members of the two rectangular frames at corners of the first horizontal frame, and a first motor adaptable to engage a shaft, the shaft having a gear on opposing ends thereof, each gear rotatably engaged to the linear gear of a respective vertical member. The bay may also include a first belt positioned between the lower horizontal members of the two rectangular frames wherein operation of the first motor provides vertical movement of the holding structure within the confines of the two rectangular frames and operation of the first belt provides lateral movement within the confines of the two rectangular frames.
Another embodiment of the present subject matter provides a system for delivery of products from a wheeled vehicle having one or more delivery bays. The system may include vertical frames in at least one of the bays, the frames carrying a holding structure providing vertical movement of the products within the vehicle and may include a belt assembly providing lateral movement of the products within the vehicle.
An additional embodiment of the present subject matter may provide a delivery vehicle comprising a plurality of bays, at least one of the plural bays including two rectangular frames, each frame having two horizontal members and two vertical members and each frame opposing and facing the other. The vehicle may also include a holding structure engaged by both of the rectangular frames, the structure comprising a plurality of trays wherein the structure is adaptable to provide vertical movement of the plural trays within the confines of the two rectangular frames. The vehicle may further include one or more mechanisms positioned between the lower horizontal members of the two rectangular frames, the one or more mechanisms adaptable to provide lateral movement within the confines of the two rectangular frames.
A further embodiment of the present subject matter provides a method for loading products in a vehicle or delivering products to an individual from the vehicle. The method may include the steps of operating one or more mechanisms and imparting vertical and lateral motion to a product within a bay of the vehicle using the one or more mechanisms. An exemplary vehicle may include at least one bay having two rectangular frames, each frame with two horizontal members and two vertical members and each frame opposing and facing the other. The vehicle may also include a holding structure engaged by both of the rectangular frames, the structure comprising one or more horizontal trays having the product contained thereon.
Yet another embodiment of the present subject matter may provide a method for tracking the delivery of products to a customer. The method may include the steps of assigning a code to identify a product, loading the product into a delivery vehicle having one or more delivery bays, the one or more delivery bays having vertical frames carrying a holding structure and having a belt assembly. The method may further include unloading the product from the delivery vehicle and tracking the delivery of the product using the code where at least one of the loading or unloading further comprises providing vertical movement of the product using the holding structure and providing lateral movement using the belt assembly with the one or more delivery bays of the vehicle.
These embodiments and many other objects and advantages thereof will be readily apparent to one skilled in the art to which the invention pertains from a perusal of the claims, the appended drawings, and the following detailed description of the embodiments.